Every now and then, reports surface in the Western press of a riot somewhere in China. The latest example is a Reuters dispatch from Beijing on thousands rioting in Huankantou village in wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang. The current instance is a relative wealthy province where

Police had tried to disperse about 200 elderly women who had kept a 24-hour vigil at sheds and at a roadblock outside an industrial park housing about 13 chemical factories for two weeks, villagers and local officials said by telephone.

Two of the women were killed, two villagers said. "They were run over by police cars," one said.

Following the police action thousands rioted in protest.

Other sorts of riots occur in impoverished provinces away from the coastal cities, where incomes are a tiny fraction of those in Shanghai or Beijing. Market reforms may have actually worsened the situation in some of these areas.

The fact that China's government is repressive often leads foreign observers to assume that it is strong. In fact, China's rulers know very well that their hold on power is tenuous, and that the threat of popular discontent boiling over into rebellion and even disintegration is very real. China's history has many cycles of poltiical fragmentation, alternating with cycles of centralization, and this is familiar to all.

Market reforms which have loosened up central control have also produced greater stresses on social order, as winners and losers have emerged. Losers are nearly always restive, while winners sometimes get ideas about their own power and influence.

Keep a careful eye on the possibilities for rebellion in China. The rulers in Beijing certainly do.

EIJING, April 13 - Thousands of people rioted this week in a village in southeastern China, overturning police cars and driving away officers who had tried to stop elderly villagers protesting against pollution from nearby factories.

By this afternoon, three days after the riot, witnesses say crowds had convened in Huaxi Village in Zhejiang Province to gawk at a tableau of destroyed police cars and shattered windows. Police officers outside the village were reportedly blocking reporters from entering the scene but local people, reached by telephone, said villagers controlled the riot area.

Advertisement

"The villagers will not give up if there is no concrete action to move the factories away," said Mr. Lu, a villager who witnessed part of the confrontation and refused to give his full name. "The crowd is growing. There are at least 50,000 or 60,000 people."

Other villagers gave substantially smaller crowd estimates. But they agreed on the broad outlines of a violent clash on Sunday that came when local villagers acted on their frustration after, they say, trying in vain for two years to curb pollution from chemical plants in a nearby industrial park.

An account in a local state-controlled newspaper blamed the brawl on local agitators and said thousands of people had set upon government workers with rocks, clubs and sticks.

There were conflicting reports of injuries, and Mr. Lu said two elderly female protesters were gravely injured after being run over by a police vehicle. The story in the Dongyang Daily newspaper said more than 30 government employees were hospitalized, including five with serious injuries. Neither account could be confirmed.

The riot occurred on the same weekend that several thousand people in Beijing and Guangzhou held protests against Japan. These demonstrations, however, were officially authorized, with youthful urbanites shouting angry slogans and, at one point, tossing bottles at the Japanese Embassy, at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

But the riot described in Huaxi Village is seen as a symptom of the widening social unrest in the Chinese countryside that has become a serious concern for government leaders. Last year, tens of thousands of protesters in western Sichuan Province clashed with the police in a protest over a long-disputed dam project. Smaller rural protests are becoming commonplace and are often violent...

Useful Searches

About USMessageBoard.com

USMessageBoard.com was founded in 2003 with the intent of allowing all voices to be heard. With a wildly diverse community from all sides of the political spectrum, USMessageBoard.com continues to build on that tradition. We welcome everyone despite political and/or religious beliefs, and we continue to encourage the right to free speech.

Come on in and join the discussion. Thank you for stopping by USMessageBoard.com!